(no subject)

[kingsguard]

YOUR LIPS BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE

this flesh is not human this culture is not freedom the world has terminal cancer, and i want to live with you. day 5- arthur wandering through manhattan blah blah zombies set the scene, has the pasiv, doesn't remember shit. heads to extraction point (?) day 6- military conversation day 10 - idk zombie shit day 14 - settled in into a hiding spot. someone is following him. day 15 - someone is still following him. he confronts them, but he can't kill them, and basically leaves him and tells him to fuck off. day 16 - he's still following him. day 18 - arthur is injured, eames saves him. eames seems upset he doesn't remember anything, but he stays and takes care of arthur. arthur kind of has no choice. eames get them somewhere relatively safe, they both go under and eames shows him a dream. it starts to kickstart some of arthur's memories, but they wake up via zombie horde, and even if arthur wants to remember more, eames decides it's too dangerous to go under together like that again. day 20 - one person has to keep watch, at least, so arthur goes under on his own. projection of eames flirts and kisses him, and he remembers ariadne, cobb. day 21 - he doesn't talk about it. day 27 - asks if they were together. eames says they weren't, not really. arthur asks if he wanted to be, and he says yes. day 28- enduring another zombie attack. low on ammunition. eames says he could try ambushing one of the soldiers, arthur tells him not to be a dumbass. and then they fuck. day 30 - they start onto open road. it's basically wasteland, at this point. arthur asks to go under again, and tells eames' projection he doesn't remember him. eames says that he's here, so obviously he does, and it's whether or not he wants to remember. talks to cobb and mal, too. they're running low on supplies, eames kills someone to get them food. arthur doesn't talk about it either. he asks if he loved him, and eames says he still does. 5 DAYS AFTER Arthur had woken up half-buried in a pile of rubble, remembering absolutely nothing. He had his suit, torn and tattered as it was, a gun in his hand, a silver suitcase in the other. A few minutes lying in the mess of concrete and asphalt, blinking away the bleariness in his eyes, he'd started to remember his name, but -- not much else. He can't remember why he has a gun, or a suitcase, or why he's in a suit. He can't remember why he's half-stuck here out on the street in what's left of some kind of half-collapsed building, and the only thing in his mind is something telling him, you can't remember, this might be a dream. That could mean a lot of things, but the first thing he does is dig himself out of the fucking rubble ( his ankle got caught under what looks like the remains of a table, a little twisted and swollen but he'll walk on it well enough ) and check his gun. Three shots fired. The suitcase has nothing in it that means anything to him, a mess of metal and tubes and wires, vials containing some strange clear liquid, skinny plastic tubes ending in sharp little needles clearly meant to feed into human veins past the skin. Little things tug at his memories, but -- the more he looks at it, the more he realizes exactly how much he doesn't remember, and he shuts the damn thing again before long. He finds some spare magazines on him, and -- a single red die. He doesn't know what it means, doesn't know shit apart from his name, and when he half-staggers out into the open air from his half-collapsed building onto the street he recognizes Manhattan, recognizes it's far too quiet for Manhattan at any time day. There are overturned cars on the pavement, not a single shop-front that still has an intact window, bodies in the streets like he'd woken up into a war zone -- it feels strangely familiar, making his way down the remnants of downtown Manhattan with a loaded gun in his hand. ( Arthur. My name is Arthur. I lived in Manhattan, and -- ) He tries to repeat what he knows, what he remembers, keep it all in his head like it's all he has to hold onto, but somehow he has this terrible, overwhelming urge to shoot himself in the head. --- They don't talk about it. --- Arthur wakes up again. This time, the sleep was dreamless, and Eames is knelt by his side, his fingers curved lightly around his wrist, and he immediately pulls away with an apologetic smile before Arthur can jerk his hand away. He already knows Arthur hates it when he touches him, he doesn't need to be reminded -- but Arthur's skin tingles, where his fingers had been, remembering their warmth. "Your pulse seems stronger," he says, pushing himself upright and dusting off his trousers. "We'll change your bandages again later. Anyone else I'd ask to rest for another week, but knowing you, well -- you'll be right as rain in a couple of days, and I won't have to mother you any more, hm?" The thing Arthur can think of to say is, with a slight cough, "Right as rain?" "The rainiest," Eames answers with a laugh. --- --- When Arthur wakes up, Eames is keeping watch by the window, and Arthur feels an urge to trace the creases in his brow with his fingers. He turns away. The movement is enough for Eames to hear, and he glances at him over his shoulder with a smile, asks if he had a nice dream. "I'm remembering," Arthur answers. He thinks. Maybe his mind is making up the memories, but they'd felt real enough, and Eames nods, tells him he'd known the PASIV would help him there. He starts to go about it, the way Eames always does. The subconscious is a wonderful thing, Arthur, and you never really forget something, you just have to access it, and of course a man like you would never let important memories slip away, no, never. A man like you, darling, would've put everything important away in a little lockbox you keep in a secret compartment in your closet, and before this Arthur'd always hated whenever he started to ramble, especially when he rambled like this. About him. About Arthur, like he remembers him better than he remembers itself. Now all he can think to do is think to himself, yeah. That sounds like me. Eames goes on to describe how Arthur would've hidden the key to that box of memories, and Arthur can't help but notice that it sounds less like a colorful metaphor and more like he's remembering something Arthur's actually done, like Eames once found some secret compartment that he could only find by tapping around in the right places ( on the back wall of the closet, Arthur suddenly remembers, a false wall, that's where he kept the PASIV if he was ever in his apartment between jobs ) and figured out where Arthur had hidden the key. Eames keeps talking, and before he can stop himself, Arthur blurts out -- " -- Eames." He stops right in the middle of a word, looks at him expectantly, and whenever Eames looks at him Arthur feels like he's almost paying too much attention, seeing straight through him, trying to drink all of him in. Absurdly it almost makes Arthur feel self-conscious, but he ignores it, and asks, "Did you love me?" There's a slight pause, a moment where something flickers in Eames' eyes that he can't quite read. He looks down for a second, and the smile that plays across his lips is so soft and so genuine it almost hurts, meeting his eyes again. He reaches out, and this time Arthur doesn't flinch away when he feels those fingertips brush against his cheek, the touch featherlight, almost nothing at all, tracing a faint line to the corner of his mouth. "Arthur," he says, "I still do." Eames doesn't wait for an answer. He just pulls away and turns back to the window and the empty street, and Arthur rolls over onto his side, his back to Eames, the rest of the night passing in silence. --- this far awake is a joke, our love is real and the world is diagnosed with terminal cancer i love your lips before the apocalypse so let's bomb the moonlight and dance armageddon's another job, it's all on the inside don't let them tell you love is a lie love is so real the best bet's to stay alive lets go bomb the moonlight, lets go take it back what was ours by right.